Job Outsourcing Portal with the Aid of Grid Computing ...research.ijcaonline.org/volume45/number23/pxc3879411.pdf · Job Outsourcing Portal with the Aid of Grid Computing Architecture

International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)

Volume 45– No.23, May 2012

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Job Outsourcing Portal with the Aid of Grid Computing Architecture

Emuoyibofarhe,

O.N., Department of Computer Science and Information

Technology Bowen University, Iwo,

Osun State, Nigeria

Akinwunmi, A.O, Department of Computer Science and Information

Technology Bowen University, Iwo,

Osun State, Nigeria

Emuoyibofarhe , O.J

Department of Computer Science and Engineering,

Ladoke Akintola University of Technology

Alamu F.O.

Department of Computer Science and Engineering,

Ladoke Akintola University of Technology

ABSTRACT Over the years, businesses have been cringing under the

heavy weight of insufficient resources for optimum business

delivery. The field of operations research has helped a great

deal in ensuring that decision variables are optimized

(maximized or minimize) for maximum yield. However, in as

much as these techniques are efficient in the management of

the quantity of resources or number of people to be engaged

in certain services, to ensure optimum results, it has not been

able to create a way out of the dearth of expertise for the

execution of certain specialized tasks.

The job outsourcing portal which was developed will be a hub

for submission of jobs/projects (services), convergence of

service providers (resources) and the allocation of available

jobs (services) to relevant service providers (resources) in

order to meet business goals and objectives much faster. The

portal was developed using Hypertext preprocessor (PHP),

incorporated with Hypertext Markup language (HTML) and

MYSQL database was used for the backend support.

The adoption of this system will ensure a conglomeration of

experts in a centralized location (the portal) and will aid the

computerization of the outsourcing process, which will

eventually have a ripple effect on quality job rendering in

enterprise.

Keywords Job outsourcing process, Service providers, Portal, Hub and

Resource virtualization

1. INTRODUCTION Building a business used to be all about ownership. In order to

guarantee access to the skills, knowledge and assets necessary

to deliver a given product or service, you had to own or

employ them. And the more you owned the more control you

had over your business.

Today, it's a different story. Volatile markets, increasingly

specialised skills and ever-changing technologies increasingly

call the ownership model into question. So, businesses started

contracting-out recurring internal activities to external

suppliers: and outsourcing was born. All the manpower,

equipment and facilities to properly perform the outsourced

activity were provided by someone else, so companies were

free to invest more in the 'vital organs' of their business. And

because external companies were doing work previously done

by employees, responsibilities were in black and white -

rather than clouded by office politics (Telindus, 2009). It is

common place that in this „jet age‟, every second spent by an

employee on a job that does not add value to the satisfaction

of the organisation‟s customer needs is a waste. Many a time,

organizations usually leave their core areas of operation to

concentrate on some other important yet distracting activities.

This could have a fatal effect on business productivity. To

minimize loses accrued from these distractions, Some

organisations go as far as outsourcing whole departments to

third party organisations with core competences in such areas

of operation. This enhances their concentration on their core

areas of business, hereby fostering maximum productivity

The crave for timely and efficient business delivery through

expertise has therefore led to the current trends in

outsourcing, where specialized projects or business processes

are contracted out to service providers in that specific domain

of interest.

This crave for (human) resource virtualization is similar to the

crave for (Computational) resource virtualization that led to

the development of the Computing grid. This similarity

therefore was the rationale behind the development of a job

outsourcing portal, using the Grid Computing Architecture.

2. OUTSOURCING

Outsourcing is contracting with another company or person to

do a particular function. Almost every organization

outsources in some way. Typically, the function being

outsourced is considered non-core to the business. The

outside firms that are providing the outsourcing services are

third-party providers, or as they are more commonly called,

service providers (Sourcingmag, 2008). Outsourcing

involve(s) the transfer of the management and/or day-to-day

execution of an entire business function to an external service

provider. The client organization and the supplier enter into a

contractual agreement that defines the transferred services.

3. GRID

Plaszczak/Wellner defined Grid computing as “the technology

that enables resources virtualization, on demand provisioning

and service (resource) sharing between organisations”.

CERN, one of the biggest users of Grid technology talks of

Grid Computing as “a service for sharing computer power and

data storage capacity over the internet”.

Grid Computing can mean different things to different

individuals. The grand vision is often presented as an analogy

to power grids, where users (or electrical appliances) get

access to electricity through wall sockets with no care or

consideration for where or how the electricity is actually

generated (Redbooks, 2005).

4. ENTERPRISE GRID Enterprise Grid computing is specifically the use of grid

computing within the context of a business or enterprise,



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rather than perhaps for academic or research purpose.

Enterprise grids are typically managed by a single enterprise

i.e. an entity; the business is responsible for managing a

networked pull of resources and set of services and also for

the assignment of resources to services in order to meet its

goals. The resources and services may and may not be owned

by the business. Enterprise grid is a collection of

interconnected (networked) grid components under the

control of a grid management entity (EGA, 2006).

5. PROPOSED SYSTEM

Fig1: Job Lifecycle on the proposed System

6. POSSIBLE IMPLEMENTATION

OPTIONS The implementation of this project could be approached in two

ways. The possible options are:

i. Open Access: This project can either be adopted as an open

application where there is an administrative enterprise

monitoring the submission and execution of jobs on the portal.

Freelance service providers have the opportunity of logging on

to the portal for registration and jobs can be posted by

anybody. ii. Closed Access: It could also be adopted in house by an

organization to ease its outsourcing process. Organizations could

embed this outsourcing module as part of their corporate portal

such that vendors willing to work with them are asked to register

on the portal. Also, in case there is a need to outsource an entire

business process, specialists are asked to log on to the portal,

register and expect to be contacted appropriately. Jobs can only

be posted by the administrator.

7. ENTITIES INVOLVED

Service Providers / Agents: These are the registered users on

the portal. They have submitted their detailed information

(including their area of specialization) at the point of registration

and are contacted whenever a job is waiting to be outsourced. If

the job posted/submitted by the client is in their area of

specialization they receive an automatically generated email,

culled from the submitted job description, asking them to submit

their quotes.

Client/Administrator: This is used to describe any person that

has the right to post a job on the portal for execution by service

providers available on the portal.

Job: This could pass for the project that is meant to be

outsourced. A proper job description is done at the job

submission stage. These job description parameters are then

used to alert service providers that have the capability for the job

execution. Quotes are submitted and after verification, the

preferred service provider gets the job.

8 ACTIVITIES ON THE OUTSOURCING

PORTAL Registration of Service Providers

Service providers are required to register on the portal before

they can be allowed to execute jobs submitted on the portal,

since the information submitted at registration will be useful for

contacting them when jobs are available for execution. The

administrator will also require some information for proper

identification of registered agents. The following details will be

required at registration:

1. Name of Company

2. Contact Address

3. Contact Name

4. Email Address

5. Phone number

6. Zip code

7. Specialization

8. Username

9. Password

10. Security Question

11. Favorite Answer

12. Access code – Issued on payment of subscription and

verification (through scratch card).

These pieces of information are stored in the database for further

utilization.

Job submission on The Grid

Job submission/posting is done by the administrative user

through the job submission form. This form contains details

such as:

1. Job title

2. Job Category

3. Job Description

4. Job Deadline

5. Bid Deadline

6. Job Budget

7. Posting date( Automatically generated when job is

posted)

However, only an administrative user can post a job using this

facility. There is a facility for adding new administrative users at

the administrator end of the portal.

Submission of Quotes

On submission of job by client, the job description is mailed to

registered service providers with required skill (those that fall

into the selected job category)



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needed for the execution of the submitted job. The name and

email of service providers that were contacted is also written to

database for the records.

Qualified service providers that receive job notification can bid

for the job by posting their quotes on the portal for verification

by the administrator, after downloading the tender document and

paying the prescribed fee.

Job Execution

The outsourcing company, through the administrator, verifies

the quotes that were submitted and invites the preferred bidders

for a chat, before consummating the contract.

Fig 2: Activity Diagram of the Proposed system

Receive Job

Notification

Home

Page [Not Registered]

Contact

Page

Browse

Waiting

Jobs/Project

s

Register

View

News

[Registered]

[Admin User]

[Service Provider]

[Login Invalid]

[Login Valid]

Comment

on General

Forum

[Interested]

[Not Intereste

d]

Submit

Quote

[Approved]

[Not Approve

d]

Execute Job

Access

project

Update

Forum

Post Job

Update

News

Verify

Quotes

View

Posted jobs

Manage

Registered

Service

providers

View

Submitted

quotes

Contact

Service

Provider

[Not Approve

d]

Access

project

Update

Forum Logout



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Implementation AND RESULT

Fig 2: The home page of the job outsourcing portal

Registering New Users

Accessing the major sections of the portal requires different

level of authentication. The service providers have to be

registered to be able to submit quote and contribute on the

general forum. Also administrators must have been added by an

existing administrator, before they can perform the various

administrative tasks. The “Register” link on the home page

allows for registration of service providers while the “Register

new user” link at post project page allows for the addition of

administrative users.

Fig 3: Registration page for Service Providers



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Fig 4: Registration page for Client/Administrator

Job Posting/Submission

At the homepage, there is a link for posting new jobs/projects,

but only administrators can login to post projects. The admin

login page and the job description page are as shown in figure 5

and figure 6 respectively

Fig 5: Administrator login page

Fig 6: The Job Description page



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Browsing Waiting Projects

Once the project is posted, the home page refreshes to display

the five latest projects, while the full listing is displayed on the

„Browse Waiting projects‟ page accessible through the „Browse

project‟ link.

Fig 7: Browse waiting projects page

Submission of Quote/Bidding for the Project

Service providers can place their bid for the job immediately by

clicking on the Job Id of preferred job or by clicking the link in

the email message sent to them. However, Only registered users

can place a bid. However, before bidding, the service provider

downloads the tender document and fills it.

Fig 8: Submission of Quote

Fig 9: Bidding for the Job

The General Forum

This is an avenue for service providers to share their opinion and

experience over time. The client or administrator could also post

a comment when the subject of deliberation require their

attention



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Fig 10: The General forum

The Project Update Forum

This is an avenue for service providers with a running contract

to drop comments on areas where assistance is needed for

quality job rendering or the job progress update. The client logs

in and posts their answer to the questions posed. Service

providers with a running contract/job are given special login

details for this forum.

Fig11: The Project Update Forum

News Update and Posting

Anybody, whether registered or unregistered can view the news

update page. The news update is populated from database. There

is an interface on the administrator end of the portal for posting

the news. Below is a view of the news update page and the

News Posting page

.



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Fig12: The News Posting page

Fig 13: The News Update page

ETHICS ON THE PORTAL

Busy Service providers are not expected to bid for new jobs

until they have the ability to accommodate the job, any

contradiction will cause the provider to be barred from the

portal. Also, service providers who execute any job shoddily

may be barred from the portal. The figure depicts the interface

for barring service provider.

Fig 14: Barring Service Providers



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9. CONCLUSION

Considering the benefits accrued from the implementation of

this web based outsourcing solution, it is only smart for

interested parties to consider this option as a replacement for the

legacy manual outsourcing procedures, by adapting it to their

specialized outsourcing needs. This project has been develop to

accommodate the outsourcing requirements of the largest

organizations. For those who have not embraced outsourcing as

a tool for business simplification, possibly because of the

bottlenecks involved, this system is a total simplification of the

procedures. I call it “outsourcing at your fingertips” .

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absolute beginner”

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Job Outsourcing Portal with the Aid of Grid Computing ...research.ijcaonline.org/volume45/number23/pxc3879411.pdf · Job Outsourcing Portal with the Aid of Grid Computing Architecture